French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, considered the front runner for the post of International Monetary Fund's Managing Director by a section of Indian officials, did not get any assurance from the Indian leadership whom she met during her day-long visit here.
The election was dictated by another French national, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, quitting the post following sexual assault charges.
Addressing a news conference, four days before her Mexican rival, Agustin Carstens, arrives here, Ms. Lagarde denied feeling frustrated by the dead bat offered by Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee when he told her that merit and not nationality should be the criteria for the top post in the IMF.
Talking to journalists before Ms. Lagarde met the media, Mr. Mukherjee confirmed that there was no assurance given to her. “We are working on consensus.”
Ms. Lagarde also met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
She left for Beijing as part of her mission to touch as many BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries as possible to assuage their concerns over yet another European attempting to take the top job at the IMF. Under an unspoken consensus, the U.S. gets to keep the top post at the World Bank while the one at the IMF is apportioned to a European.
Currently, Ms. Lagarde and Mr. Carstens are the two candidates in the fray. The deadline is three days away and there are indications of the former South African Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel, stepping into the fray.
At their first-ever summit in China, BRICS leaders called for stepping up the pace of reforms in the two Bretton Woods institutions — the World Bank and the IMF — which should include doing away with the Western stranglehold on the two top jobs.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently said merit and not nationality should be the criterion. During his meeting with Ms. Lagarde, Mr. Mukherjee stayed close to the script: “India wants the election of Managing Director of IMF to be on the basis of merit and competence and to be held in a transparent manner and not on any particular nationality. There should be a consensus.”
He also dwelt on a few imponderables such as the possibility of Mr. Manuel joining the race. “It would be difficult to say at this moment because there was divergence of views in respect of South African candidature. So it is not possible to say whether there will be a common candidate or not,” he said. Of the Mexican Central Bank Governor, Mr. Mukherjee described him as a competent person with whom India was in touch.
Ms. Lagarde, if elected, promised to support the ongoing process of increasing India's quota at the IMF which, she conceded, was not in synch with its GDP and contribution to the IMF.
